Monday, April 4, 2022
The inevitability of challenge is an important truth. But the permanency of challenge is a choice. If you try to avoid challenge, you’re trying to run from yourself. Generally, it’s our poor choices, our poor interpretations, and our poor insight that causes most pain. It’s pride that keeps us from seeing how we actually are hurting ourselves. Who likes to admit that they are causing their own pain? But we keep replaying negative “movies” in our minds that are about the past. We keep going back to mistakes, never seeing how they can actually help change behavior. We keep complaining, never seeing the harm that it causes. We keep repeating negative eating patterns, never seeing how they are leading to poor health. We spend compulsively, never understanding how it leads to financial hardship. We mindlessly scroll through social media, never paying attention to how icky we feel seeing other people’s “perfect” lives. We keep pleasing people, never seeing how we are neglecting our own needs. We keep choosing negative interpretations, never seeing how our outlook is creating more challenge.
Unprepared people are blind. They are blind to what challenge is teaching them. Prepare yourself to remove people, if they are indeed causing you harm. Just remember, you cannot remove yourself, so look closely. Prepare yourself to take responsibility, if its your fault. Challenge is never permanent, unless you choose to blind yourself to your own responsibility. Difficulty never gets the last word, unless you keep complaining about your misery. You can’t run from yourself. You can only look towards yourself. You can only look at what you’re doing to cause the problem in the first place. Get there sooner and challenge looses its grip on you. Challenge helps you look inward. Don’t be afraid of what you see, just change it.